Taiwan Today

In the recently translated edition of The City Trilogy by celebrated Taiwanese author Chang Hsi-kuo, the Huhui civilization struggles to defend its beloved Sunlon City and outlive its own history.

The City Trilogy by Chang Hsi-kuo, translated by John Balcom (2003). Columbia University Press, New York, 408 pages. ISBN 0-231-12852-5
 

Outer space, a region beyond the bottled-up atmosphere of Earth, gives to the science-fiction writer a carte blanche for his imagination, and the astral worlds of far-off galaxies provide a setting unrestricted by the known phenomena of our own planet. Yet, science-fiction authors, still earthlings after all, project--like the glow of a terrestrial film splashed across the pale face of the moon or distant planets, real and imagined--the history of man in different forms.

In the fantastic worlds they have created, these authors struggled with the long-held premise that progress was a benevolent force. As history illustrates, technological progress and other advances in science improve standards of living, while making us ever more dangerous to ourselves.

Attempts to grapple with the paradoxes of civilization and its history have been a consistent feature of science fiction. In The Time Machine, written in 1895, H.G. Wells dispatches a Victorian observer forward in time only to discover that beneath the utopian patina of a future world lurk the same evils that have plagued mankind throughout its history. Wells was struggling with the question that many science fiction authors have asked: can humanity wriggle out of the cycles of history that condemn us to repeat our mistakes?

The scientist in The Time Machine, according to the narrator of the novel, views the question with deep pessimism: "He, I know--for the question had been discussed among us long before the time machine was made--thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end."

Here is the riddle that is picked up in The City Trilogy by Chang Hsi-kuo, who has been described as the father of science fiction in Taiwan. The trilogy was published in its entirety for the first time in English by Columbia University Press as part of its ongoing series Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan. That a highbrow academic publisher should be interested in a work of science fiction is not so much a tribute to the subgenre as it is to the author of The City Trilogy. Chang is well known for his non-science-fiction novels that explore contemporary society in Taiwan with a gift for characterization and an ear for dialogue. In his highly colloquial novel The Chess Champion , for example, Chang recounts the comic comings and goings of young professionals through breezy dialogue. The novel still has a touch of the fantastic, however, which arrives in the form of a child who can peer into the future (and therefore predict the moves of his chess opponents). He sees the continuum of time as a whole, in which the present and the future are equally visible parts. Yet, in The Chess Champion, the otherworldly acts primarily as a plot device to drive a comedy of manners in which the characters try to capitalize on the boy's gift of prophecy for their own benefit. While Chang introduces brief reflections of parallel worlds in The Chess Champion, he takes the reader entirely through the looking glass in The City Trilogy.

The trilogy tells the story of a planet in a remote corner of a fictional galaxy where the Huhui civilization attempts to outlive the many forces ranged against it. The center of the civilization is Sunlon City, a name, we learn in a footnote, that the earliest settlers from Earth bestowed on the city to honor their solar system (sun) and the ancient glories of Babylon (lon). The city is divided into nine districts called "bulus" and ruled from the administrative center that lies at the heart of the city. The districts have their own characteristics, indicated by their names: Sunart bulu is home to the city's craftsmen; Sunevil bulu contains all manner of villainy and vice, including prostitution, drug dealing, gambling, and, comically, a stock market; and Sungood bulu is the home of democracy.

A map of the portion of the Huhui planet in which the narrative takes place and a close-up sketch of Sunlon City and its districts are provided by the author and prove to be quite useful for following the many adventures that play out in the trilogy.

A test for any storyteller is to create a world that, no matter how fantastic, rings true. It must be believable and consistent, so that the reader is willing to suspend disbelief and settle into the fictional surroundings. Chang does this admirably and with great imagination. When the purple sun of the Huhui Planet sets over Sunlon City, for example, a fine sand blows through the city sending people scurrying for shelter and ends the bustling market life of the bulus for the day. The yellowish sand blowing in from the plains is much like the loess soil that still sends the citizens of Beijing scampering from the streets and reaching for gauzy facemasks when it periodically blows into the city. Unlike in China, the yellow "rains," as the Huhui people call the sandstorms, arrive in Sunlon City every evening, and in the early morning, street sweepers are dispatched to clear the streets for a new day. The portrait that emerges is that of an orderly medieval town bustling with activity.

That daily activity includes much talk of politics, for the bulus are beehives of resistance to the Shan empire, which has colonized the planet. In the Sungood bulu, the home of democracy, resistance leaders gather at a tavern to discuss the plans of the Green Snake Brotherhood, the bulu's insurgent group. The Green Snake Brotherhood is determined to rid the Huhui Planet of the Shan and destroy the galactic warship parked in the center of the administrative region of the city, which the Shan reserve as a final weapon against any resistance.

Their brotherhood, with its oaths, romantic struggle, and sense of justice, is reminiscent of the heroic brotherhoods of Chinese historical romances such as Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And the members of the brotherhood are storybook heroes: brave, loyal, and righteous. They distinguish themselves by wearing gowns embroidered with three green snakes and carrying swords with twisting serpentine handles. The vanguard of the brotherhood, the Death Commandos--suicide bombers who blow themselves up by pulling out the buttons of their robes and detonating in the presence of their enemies--initiate the drama of the first book of the trilogy when they swallow their ultimate loyalty pills (which are lethal) and prepare to attack the Shan. It turns out that they have been tricked and the uprising is doomed.

To find an antidote for the pills and save the warriors, the Green Snake Brotherhood accepts a plan hatched by a youthful girl who works in the tavern in which they gather. The girl is Miss Qi, and through her eyes the reader meets the many strange peoples and places of Sunlon City and its environs. Miss Qi is a soul tempter, the Huhui term for a songstress, who entertains the customers of the tavern. It is her soul that is tempted throughout the trilogy, however, as she becomes smitten with a Green Snake Brotherhood warrior, a Shan captain, and the General Shi, the leader of the Leopard people of the plains to the west of Sunlon City. Her youth and gender give her license to ask impertinent questions that often prompt action from the warriors set in their ways. She is always the flower of hope that rises from the ruins of the many battlefields portrayed in the trilogy.

Miss Qi's romantic attachments hint at the utopian longings often found in science fiction. She is unable to hate the enemies of Sunlon City as members of the Green Snake Brotherhood do. In one encounter with a Shan soldier who has taken her prisoner, she queries him on his own planet, peoples, and the rationale behind the occupation. She realizes that he is also drawn along in the sweep of history. She cannot hate a man who honors his own people and beliefs but is saddened by the conflicts that fate brings. Miss Qi, even in her youth, harbors enough wisdom to understand the pointlessness of war, while at the same time she is unable to see a way out of the cycles of violence.

The peoples of the Huhui Planet, it turns out, have ancient hatreds and allegiances, and jockey for power often by forming shifting alliances. The trilogy tries the reader's patience at times because of the many twists and turns, but the device works as a means of introducing the fascinating peoples of the planet and their imaginative customs.

Of the more curious customs of Sunlon City, for example, are the marriage arrangements. Because men outnumber women in the city, there are four types of marriage recognized by law: one man to one woman, one man to one man, two men to one woman, three men to one woman. Unions between two or more women are not recognized, and this inequality has engendered a subversive lesbian movement.

Divorce customs are equally complex. To extricate oneself from marriage, a divorce ritual can be conducted by repeating "I don't love you" nine times. If the other party is unwilling to accept the divorce, however, he or she can simply repeat: "I still love you," 99 times. The question can be bandied back and forth adding one digit each time. The ritual demands that each party repeat their oaths the exact number of times, and after a few rounds few are able to keep count. These unfortunate souls, the reader learns, often end up in the Mandarin Duck Asylum, which houses those who have gone mad in the course of divorce proceedings. In a footnote, the author refers readers still curious about the marriage rituals to An Investigation of the Huhui Marital System, by Ichikawa Yasuo, published by the Research Institute for Huhui Civilization, Kyoto University, Japan. The use of fictitious references in the trilogy, often through footnotes, opens a window on Chang's bookish sense of humor.

Although the story is told with a sense of humor, it sifts through serious questions. Acting as the bookends for the story is the tale of a bronze statue and its eventual return. In the prologue, Chang introduces the history of the bronze statue, which both celebrated Huhui civilization and spawned in its shadow war and destruction. The statue's origins are murky, but it rose in honor of either the original inhabitants or their king. In the strife that followed, the statue was melted down and recast in a larger size by future kings. It rose to such gigantic proportions that it was visible 80 kilometers away from the city. Recasting the statue eventually proved to be too cumbersome, and later leaders simply added their own layers of bronze. So expensive though was the process that it bankrupted the city and doomed new conquerors to their own financial ruin. The statue, in other words, began to weigh too heavily on the civilization. This echoes the "growing pile of civilization," mentioned in The Time Machine, which like the bronze statue, "must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end."

When the statue reappears at the end of The City Trilogy , it arrives through an aberration in time and space, which throws the civilization's history and future into doubt. The Huhui historians, who once could check the future in their historical records, are left, like the rest of us, with no guide to the coming events of the civilization. They are forced to abandon the histories, burning them to warm soldiers preparing for battle on the plains beyond Sunlon City. The trilogy thus concludes only with the riddle and not the answers to the questions of civilization and its history that have been projected into space by science-fiction writers.

In the end, for all its learning and all its progress, mankind knows neither whence it came nor whither it goes. Our origins lie in shadows of prehistory, and our future, like that of the civilization under the purple sun of the Huhui Planet, remains undiscovered in the impenetrable beyond.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Robert Green.

Q&A with Chang Hsi-kuo

TAIWAN REVIEW: Why after such a successful career writing fiction did you turn to science fiction?

CHANG HSI-KUO: I was tired of realism as the only means of writing fiction. Science fiction is a genre that allows me to explore the human condition without fetters. Science fiction is mostly about alienation, which is a theme I was deeply interested in (and still am).

History seems to play a central role in The City Trilogy . Do you think mankind can learn from its own history?

In The City Trilogy I was deconstructing history. It is often said mankind can learn from its own history. Do we really learn from our history? I have my doubts.

Works such as the Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms seem to have influenced your episodic adventure tale of the Huhui civilization. What works of Chinese literature and Western literature most influenced your writing?

I have always enjoyed classic Chinese stories or, as you put it, episodic adventure tales. Moreover, exile and alienation are themes I have always been interested in, and you can find many such examples in both Chinese and Western literature.

Are there a few science-fiction writers in particular that you enjoy reading and why?

Arthur Clarke for his insight and humanity; Isaac Asimov for his grand views of history. Franz Kafka is not a science -fiction writer, but he is of great interest to me.

Has your training as an electrical engineer and your work as a professor of computer science influenced your science -fiction writing?

Not really.

The Bronze Statue Cult in the trilogy seems to represent religion to some degree and presents itself as an opponent of history. Is that a fair statement?

For someone familiar with contemporary Chinese history, the Bronze Statue Cult may have obvious references. On the other hand different interpretations of the Bronze Statue can be associated with greed, fame, power . . . you name it. The Bronze Statue is always growing, which says a lot. The City Trilogy deconstructs history, although admittedly we are all deeply influenced by historical events.

The City Trilogy ends with Sunlon City in flames, but it is unclear if the city will rise again as it has so many times before. Would you say you are pessimistic or optimistic about the future of our own civilization?

I am pessimistic in seeing so many repeats, but also optimistic for precisely the same reason. This is part of the human condition. It's a package deal.

Are you working on a new book now and if so can you tell us a little about it?

I am working on a series of five books. Each book has a theme and is a collection of short stories, novellas, and essays. The themes are respectively Eat, Wear, Dwell, Travel, and Entertain. The collective title is "The Third Principle of Dr. Sun Yat-sen" because the third principle in Dr. Sun's Three Principles of the People is about Eat, Wear, Dwell, Travel, and Entertain, in other words, ordinary people's concerns. Writing at the rate of one book a year, I have already published four of the five books, and I am working on the last one, which happens to be Wear. After these five books, I plan to return to the Huhui world again.

Three years ago I visited Argentina and discovered one of its northern provinces is actually Huhui! It is an amazing coincidence, and makes me ever more determined to continue the saga. Maybe this is my destiny.